Food poisoning and other food borne diseases that are caused by enteropathogenic bacteria account for millions of illnesses and thousands of deaths each year in the United States (1,2). The clinical conditions that result from acute ingestion of pathogenic bacteria include diarrhea, vomiting, and dysentery (3). However, other more serious medical complications may occur, such as renal and cardiac disorders, neurological dysfunction, hemolytic uremia, and death (4). The situation in non-industrialized countries is even worse, where it is estimated that more than 10 percent of the population is chronically inflicted with food borne disease (5). Public health organizations have not only been faced with an ever increasing rate of food poisoning cases in the United States, but with newly emerging bacterial food borne diseases (6, 7). In addition to human health issues, food borne illnesses take a continued and a heavy economic toll on society by lowering economic productivity and by stretching the available resources of local and national public health organizations (8).
The bacteria responsible for these human illnesses are from the taxonomic family Enterobacteriaceae (9). The four main genera of bacteria within this family that pose a risk to human health via food borne illnesses are: Escherichia, Salmonella, Shigella, and Yersinia. All foodstuffs are susceptible to bacterial contamination of these bacteria. The original sources of this contamination may be from animal hosts (for example, cows, chickens, or pigs) that harbor systemic infections, from improper handling of otherwise uncontaminated foodstuffs (for example, poor worker hygiene), or from washing foodstuffs in contaminated water.
Traditional food and restaurant inspection techniques have relied upon visual inspection of foodstuffs and food preparation areas. However, foodstuffs contaminated with enteropathogenic bacteria often look, smell and taste normal. Many of these pathogens may also survive the cooking process (10, 11). When bacterial culturing is conducted, samples must be returned to a laboratory for microbiological testing. Such tests often take weeks to perform. Meanwhile, a potential health risk continues.
Studies by Quirk and Bessman (12) have revealed that a dGTPase is only detected in bacteria belonging to the family Enterobacteriaceae. However, this reference does not provide nucleic acids probes and antibodies capable of detecting Enterobacteriaceae in general and also distinguishing between the various types of Enterobacteriaceae.
It is therefore imperative to develop faster and more reliable detection methods that are sensitive and specific enough to identify not only that enteropathogenic bacterial contamination exists in food and water samples, but what type of enteropathogenic bacterial contamination is present.